Where else would it be?
Dalessandro's is on the Left Bank of the Schuylkill. From downtown, it's upriver to Manayunk and then over the hill to be precise. On Wendover Street. You can call ahead (215-482-5407) but then you'll miss out on experiencing a good anticipatory drool while you sit at the little counter waiting for your steak.
You can have your Pat's, your Tom's, your Geno's. Take your wife there -- please! But don't expect to find a steak nearly as good as what you get at Dalessandro's.
Dalessandro's is at 600 Wendover Street on Henry Avenue, just a short block from the Walnut Street Entrance to the park. Handy for that empty feeling after golf. And they do serve beer. On the left bank of the Schuylkill, on the hill above and slightly northeast of Manayunk. You are at best a fool and at worst totally insane if you don't stop at Dalessandro's whenever you are even just near Philadelphia. Dalessandro's beats the sox off Pat's, Geno's, Tom's, and Chubby's -- though I have read that Chubby's, used to be the go-to call on Sundays before Dalessandro's began opening on the Sabbath, I have never been to Chubby's, can't personally recommend it and doubt I'd try anything but Dalessandro's whenever it's open.
Dalessandro's serves subs, too, very good subs -- but the best subs I ever ate were at The Rendezvous on West King Street in Lancaster, around the corner from my father's boyhood home at 342 West Orange. "You can go die in a well if you don't like it" (as someone said in another forum), and that's exactly how I used to feel about The Rendezvous. They have a great cheese steak, too. I pray the sandwiches are still that good. I used to stop there for a steak to fill me up and couple subs to tide me over on my long ride home to Charlottesville after visiting my grandparents, Martin Weaver and Nellie Boyd Gehman, often after the Gehman Family Reunion at the Behrville Fire Hall, where my great-uncle Harold B. Gehman, who was Town Constable in Blue Ball much of his life, used to tell me every year that his main job was "arresting drunken Amishmen on Saturday night." I don't know if that meant he had a lot to do or almost nothing, but that story, though perhaps apocryphal, may have been where my father, Richard Gehman, got the idea for his musical By Hex
How hard it IS to make a sub or steak sandwich properly, you will be able to judge for yourself -- but only after tasting a truly good one, after which you'll probably realize you have been eating cardboard imitations stuffed with inferior sliced meats at a shopping mall up until then. Amoroso rolls are one part of the secret. Not using "Wiz" is another. Wiz crept in later. It's just watered-down Velveeta -- which I will admit does make a passable con queso.
Measuring up to these two paragons is what I was aiming for when I opened Christian's Restaurant in McIntyre Plaza, Charlottesville. How nearly I succeeded! How people love great sandwiches! may be indicated by the fact that I was doing, sometimes, $1,700 a day at lunch -- in the middle Seventies! out of a place not much bigger than two big flat screen TVs. Three previous restaurants had failed in that location. I was aiming for enough business to pay the rent so I could make money catering. But -- possibly thanks to the beignets! One of my partners declined to continue -- too much stress. The other one, I caught coming out of the place with an entire cooked roast beef and three six packs of Heineken under his arm. We made the best sandwiches in Charlottesville! (at that time) ... Before long we were doing a land office business!
Alas, the location has now morphed into a somewhat lackluster Vietnamese restaurant that I can't recommend: the Saigon Cafe, where the food was so mediocre on my last visit almost two years ago, and the place so devoid of happy customers that I began to wonder why I didn't just volunteer to help them learn to make subs and steak sandwiches. Ah, youth!
There were hardly any decent sandwiches in Charlottesville back in the Seventies. There are not many today, for that matter. John Crafaik once asked me for the secret of making a great sandwich. Judging by the significant success of Bodo's Bagels, possibly the best advice I should have given him would have been: serve the sandwich on a bagel fresh out of the oven. And NEVER wrap it in plastic.
The best sandwich I have eaten in Charlottesville recently was at the Bodo's on University Avenue.
Most people are not passionate enough about good sandwiches.
It is worthwhile remembering the great chef Louis Szathmary's notion that "Great restaurants are like a woman's private parts -- men know how to find them."
That said, I haven't visited Dalessandro's recently. I hear a rumor that it changed hands. Let me know how you like it, please? (since I probably won't get up there this summer) ....
Dalessandro's
The Rendezvous
